Admin I Monday, Jan. 15, 2024
BERLIN – German museum leaders are meeting with delegations from Cameroon over how to handle tens of thousands of artworks and artefacts in museum collections that may have been looted from the former German colony.
The talks in the south-west German city of Stuttgart, which include leaders from Cameroon’s traditional royal families and Cameroonian communities, come after decades of discussion and hesitation.
More than 40,000 artworks from Cameroon are held in German museum collections. Many of the items are believed to have been looted from the country during the colonial era.
The aim of the talks is finding a common approach for German museums to issues surrounding the artworks , said Inés de Castro, the director of the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, which holds the country’s largest collection of Cameroonian objects.
Delegations from Cameroon and leaders of 11 German museums are discussing expectations, objects and timelines during the ongoing meeting in Stuttgart, which is expected to continue until Tuesday.
“We want to look for ways of restitution and sustainable cooperation with Cameroon,” de Castro said.
The pace of the restitution process is set by Cameroon, not by Germany, said Anna Bartels, the German Foreign Office’s commissioner for foreign cultural policy.
Cameroon was a German colony from 1884 to 1919.
During this time, objects such as musical instruments, textiles, weapons, jewellery architectural elements, everyday objects, ritual statues and masks were brought to Germany.
Various traditional communities in Cameroon are demanding their return and have begun talks with individual museums.
